Trains had to stop immediately at the nearest station while three were stuck in between stations and had to slowly travel to the nearest platform.<\/a><\/p>\nMr Tieppo said the V\/Line network required mobile coverage to operate, and that any back-up arrangements \u2013 or lack thereof \u2013 were entirely in the hands of Telstra.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe heavily rely on the telco network to provide the resilience and the back-up systems to provide telecommunications for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s something we\u2019ll investigate together with our national partners, because it\u2019s not only us in Victoria \u2013 other national rail operators have encountered the same issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll look at investigating what happened in the background and why there wasn\u2019t a back-up by Telstra to provide the communications that we needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Tieppo said whether Telstra remained V\/Line\u2019s contracted telco was beyond his authority, because the agreement sat at a national level.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe national contract is actually between the Australian Rail Track Corporation and Telstra,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be working together with ARTC to understand how to ensure this doesn\u2019t happen again and how to work with Telstra to ensure it doesn\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
A statement released on Wednesday night urged passengers to \u201cdefer travel until further notice\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thank passengers for their patience and understanding,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are working to restore services as soon as possible (on Thursday).\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Tieppo confirmed affected travellers would be able to apply for compensation.<\/p>\n
Passengers stranded on platforms across Victoria<\/p>\n
Ballarat commuters were left stranded without trains or replacement buses heading into Melbourne on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
Melbourne worker Ky Kearin waited at the station in limbo.<\/p>\n
He said the outage was \u201cannoying\u201d and \u201cdifficult\u201d.<\/p>\n
Steve Carter was unable to get into the city for a school reunion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn another six months we\u2019ll have another one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Having worked in aviation, he said he understood how the outage would have had a \u201chuge impact\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy phone wasn\u2019t working so I watched the news and it became apparent that the system was down.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife\u2019s waiting over in the car so I\u2019ll probably go have a coffee\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s going to be 1000 people jumping into cars and driving down to Melbourne now, I presume.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not fussed, but it is disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another man at the station said he was trying to get to Melbourne for a job interview.<\/p>\n
Gippsland commuters took to social media to vent their anger over this morning\u2019s train chaos.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo the trains to Gippsland ever run for more than three to four days before it\u2019s back on the bus?? Steam in 1950 was more reliable,\u201d one spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Another sarcastically added: \u201cHas anyone ever got to Melbourne by train? Curious\u201d.<\/p>\n
A third said: \u201cWe must have the best maintained rail system in the world for they are always doing maintenance \u2026 or is it that the system is hopeless? Hmm \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Others said repeated failures were undermining confidence in public transport, with one commuter saying it\u2019s \u201chard to get people to convert to public transport when this keeps happening\u201d.<\/p>\n
For many regional commuters, Wednesday\u2019s shutdown hasn\u2019t just been a one-off outage, its been yet another blow on a line where patience is already wearing thin.<\/p>\n
Transport Victoria said its signals team was monitoring conditions and adjusting traffic lights to assist replacement buses. Authorities are advising motorists to be aware of increased pedestrian and bus activity around V\/Line stations.<\/p>\n
Metro Trains services remain largely unaffected. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"V\/Line says it will pursue Telstra for hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the outage wiping out the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99],"class_list":["post-787412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}